Brush-tailed rock-wallaby

Petrogale penicillata

Blamed on cats

IUCN status: Vulnerable

EPBC Threat Rating: Minor

IUCN claim: Not attributed

Studies in support

Cats possibly hunt rock-wallabies (Doherty et al. 2015).

Studies not in support

No studies

Is the threat claim evidence-based?

There are no studies linking cats to brush-tailed rock-wallaby populations.

Evidence linking Petrogale penicillata to cats. Systematic review of evidence for an association between Petrogale penicillata and cats. Positive studies are in support of the hypothesis that cats contribute to the decline of Petrogale penicillata, negative studies are not in support. Predation studies include studies documenting hunting or scavenging; baiting studies are associations between poison baiting and threatened mammal abundance where information on predator abundance is not provided; population studies are associations between threatened mammal and predator abundance.

References

Current submission (2023) Scant evidence that introduced predators cause extinctions. Conservation Biology

Doherty, T.S., Davis, R.A., van Etten, E.J., Algar, D., Collier, N., Dickman, C.R., Edwards, G., Masters, P., Palmer, R. and Robinson, S., 2015. A continental‐scale analysis of feral cat diet in Australia. Journal of Biogeography, 42(5), pp.964-975.

EPBC. (2015) Threat Abatement Plan for Predation by Feral Cats. Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Department of Environment, Government of Australia. (Table A1).